THE SIXGUNS OF BOB MUNDEN
He stands with his gun hand poised slightly above the smooth one piece ivory grips of his holstered .45 Colt Single Action. His gloved left hand is ready to slap the hammer back as the .45 is drawn, that is to say fan the hammer of the heavily modified Colt. You, having accepted the challenge to see the draw as it is made, are almost as tense as he is. Then it happens. You don't see it. All you see is the muzzle flash as the gun is fired.
Why didn't you see the draw? Certainly your eye can move faster than the human hand! Not so. It takes fifteen one hundredth's of a second to blink and Bob Munden, the Fastest Man Who Ever Lived, has just drawn and fired a Colt Single Action .45 four and three-quarter inch barreled gunfighter's favorite sixgun in less than two one hundredths of a second, .0175 seconds to be exact. You no longer doubt that this truly is the fastest man who ever lived!
Now he readies to shoot not one but two shots and hit two balloons placed six feet apart. This time all you have to do is count two distinct shots. You see that there are indeed two rounds, and only two rounds, in the Colt Single Action and you are ready. You will not be fooled. The hand blurs, the gun fires once and two balloons break. "But he only fired once!" you protest. The loading gate is opened the cylinder is rotated and there you see, not one, but two fired primers and two shots have been fired. It happened so fast it was impossible for the human mind to detect two separate shots. Only by looking at a slowed down videotape is it possible to see the hammer fanned first by the thumb and then the little finger of the left hand of Bob Munden, the Fastest Man Who Ever Lived!
It doesn't make any difference how many shots are selected. It is impossible to count them. For the skeptics, the sixgun is loaded with six rounds. The Colt is thumb cocked in the leather for the first shot, fired by the trigger which is then held back as the thumb and little finger slap the hammer for shots two and three, the Colt is then thumb cocked again for shot number four and the thumb and little finger then fan the last two shots and it all happens so fast no one is willing to swear there were indeed six shots fired until the loading gate is opened and six empties are removed.
Bob Munden is a hired gun. He earns his living putting on fast draw demonstrations and has been doing it a long time as our paths first crossed in 1969 as he and his beautiful wife Becky did a non-politically correct shooting demonstration at our local junior high school. Munden is the winner of 3,500 plus trophies and 800 major championships. He is proud of the fact that he is the only one to ever win the Northern California, Southern California and Colorado State Championships all in the same year and he has done it seven times.
Lest you think Munden is simply a blank popper, meet him on yonder range and watch him perform many of the same demonstrations with live ammunition and others such as splitting a playing card lengthwise with a bullet first as the card is placed in a holder and then as the card is thrown and hit in the air and split. Thrown silver dollars, fifty cent pieces, even dimes are not safe from Munden's bullets. Shooting upside down, sideways, with mirrors are all part of Munden's repertoire. Let me interject here as Munden would also that fast draw with a single action should never ever be attempted with live ammunition. A slip of the hand or fingers and the gun fires in the holster and a .45 caliber bullet down the leg is a very serious matter. DON'T TRY IT! A more serious condition could be the one in which the front of the cocked sixgun catches on the front of the holster in a maximum speed draw and the gun is torn from the hand. Place the picture in your mind of a cocked single action spinning through the air landing who knows where and firing as it hits. DON'T TRY IT!
